In the Hole, Final

The Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Review 

As much trouble as I was in physically (six weeks post ligament repair) and as intermediate a skier as I will forever be, I am - for reasons I haven't quite sorted out yet - eager to go back. Some reasons seem plain enough. The Jackson Hole ski resort seems surrounded by a wide area populated by ranch owners, ranch hands, worker-bees, and rich folk who made it elsewhere but have come here to find a different kind of life. It's supposed to be a red state, but the bumper sticker on the truck parked outside our Teton Mountain Lodge hotel all week read "Bush's Plan; Leave No Child a Dime."  Teton Village and the ski runs that feed into it strikes me as more the place where people want to escape the office and come to ski the wild mountains, then the sort of place where one jets away from the office for a sec to be seen in town in the latest ski wear. If I were to describe Jackson Hole skiing in three words, I guess I would choose genuine, tough, and beautiful.

People on the lifts would actually say things like, "It doesn't matter if it is marked blue or black, you'll be ok as long as it is groomed."  Well, no, not really. Or, "Whatever you do, keep heading right." Actually, I needed to go left. "The toughest part is the face-plant in the powder, 'cause it's so cold." If I landed in a pile of powder I would just as certainly die of asphyxiation, so, quick, say something else, say something else. But the real reason I mention these tips we got is that they came from serious, 50 and 60-something men of varying sizes who could have been in any kind of business back home, just trying to help us navigate the map. These were guys out there alone or with their sons, with snow encrusted hats, skiing a tough place because they loved it and because they could. It unnerved the daylights out of me, how much these guys looked like they were six-years-old and had been tumbling in the first snowfall of the season, but at the same time, it helped me to understand that this place was the coolest, ever.

To say that I wanted to cry every other run would probably be an exaggeration, but an emotionally difficult part for me was having to tiptoe down hills that I would have attacked in earlier years. I didn't always have access to sports lessons as a kid but there was always some type of equipment around, so we would pick something up and learn to play a sport, as they say, ugly. So with skiing, I never mastered lanky, suave parallel turns until later, sort of, but nothing stopped me from attacking a mogul hill with bent knees, a nod to gravity, and a big smile. On this trip, however, I looked at all these hills with all this snow and all this vertical drop and I had to keep saying to my ski mates, "I can't do it."  Maybe I want a year to see if I can get into better shape and go back and actually do it.

The last morning, I grabbed the bus into town. I sat up front by the bus driver because I was alone and could eavesdrop or ask questions without embarrassing anyone in the family. I learned that Jackson doesn't get too crowded in Winter because most people don't like cold, but it gets wicked jammed in the Summer with everyone spilling in to see the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks. The bus drivers talked amongst themselves about what side-work they were going to do to make extra money then, cook or dump truck driver or beer pourer. The locals can't afford to own property in Jackson because most of the property is part of the national park system. Whatever isn't, is so expensive, only rich folk can own it, so the tiniest home is a million dollar item. A real local is someone from a ranch. Another kind of local is more of a service worker, like the bus driver, a hotel maid, or a construction worker. A third kind of local is someone who works the sport tourist trade who has been around for a few years, but generally has an accent from California or the Northwest or the Southeast. If they work the ski resort and wear a name tag, that information may or may not be accurate. Sometimes the guys make up fake identities. For sex purposes, I guess. The sport locals dress more like tri-athletes because they really are more like tri-athletes and are very proud of the fact that they can do almost anything better than anyone else because there is practically no oxygen in this part of the world, and they can run and bike and climb mountains and have sex without the need for oxygen.

I need oxygen.

I went into a clothing store for the ranch locals. I didn't think those kind of cowboy clothes were for real. I went into The Bootlegger, a shoe store, with shoes from Denmark, Israel, Italy, and the US. I fell in love with a tall black cowboy boot that felt like butter and cost $700, but cowboy boots don't seem to be a big item on the website, and what I am going to do with a pair back East during the Summer, anyway, wear them in the garden with a pair of shorts and look like some outsized toddler? If I still lust after them by Winter, I will see . . .

I need that boot.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming is the home of Cloudveil, a hot sports clothing company. The brochure shows lots of people clinging on the sides of mountains. There is a sport I will never understand. I guess even immediately after birth, I was just never that young; I was born with a personal relationship with the concept of mortality. But certainly the Cloudveil clothes are nice and look like they would hold up as I walk the dog around the park.

The family stayed at the Teton Mountain Lodge because it had the largest suite accommodations along with a great ski in and out set up from the more difficult mountain, but we seemed to spend more time over at the kiddie ranch area, which is where the Four Seasons hotel and restaurants were. Maybe I got too drunk with relief on our last night in Teton Village, but there was something about the Four Seasons restroom that led me to declare to the restaurant manager that when I die, I want to spend eternity in a Four Seasons bathroom, or something like that.

See, the kids' lack of filtering device that plagued me through this trip, is genetic. I think they get it from their dad.